The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [148]
And here he burst into laughter so absurd and so violent that it made the archdeacon smile. It was really Claude’s fault; why had he so spoiled the child?
“Oh, good brother Claude,” added Jehan, emboldened by this smile, “just see my broken buskins! Was there ever more tragic cothurnus on earth than boots with flapping soles?”
The archdeacon had promptly resumed his former severity.
“I will send you new boots, but no money.”
“Only a paltry penny, brother,” continued the suppliant Jehan. “I will learn Gratian by heart. I will believe heartily in God. I will be a regular Pythagoras of learning and virtue. But give me a penny, for pity’s sake! Would you have me devoured by famine, which gapes before me with its jaws blacker, more noisome, deeper than Tartarus or a monk’s nose?”
Dom Claude shook his wrinkled brow: “‘Qm non laborat,-”’
Jehan did not let him finish.
“Well, then,” he cried, “to the devil! Hurrah for fun! I’ll go to the tavern, I’ll fight, I’ll drink, and I’ll go to see the girls!”
And upon this, he flung up his cap and cracked his fingers like castanets.
The archdeacon looked at him with a gloomy air.
“Jehan, you have no soul!”
“In that case, according to Epicurus, I lack an unknown quantity composed of unknown qualities.”
“Jehan, you must think seriously of reform.”
“Oh, come!” cried the student, gazing alternately at his brother and at the alembics on the stove; “is everything crooked here,—ideas as well as bottles?”
“Jehan, you are on a very slippery road. Do you know where you are going?”
“To the tavern,” said Jehan.
“The tavern leads to the pillory.”
“It’s as good a lantern as any other, and perhaps it was the one with which Diogenes found his man.”
“The pillory leads to the gallows.”
“The gallows is a balance, with a man in one scale and the whole world in the other. It is a fine thing to be the man.”
“The gallows leads to hell.”
“That’s a glorious fire.”
“Jehan, Jehan, you will come to a bad end!”
“I shall have had a good beginning.”
At this moment the sound of footsteps was heard on the stairs.
“Silence!” said the archdeacon, putting his finger to his lip: “Here comes Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan,” he added in a low voice; “take care you never mention what you may see and hear here. Hide yourself quickly under that stove, and don’t dare to breathe.”
The student crawled under the stove; there, a capital idea occurred to him.
“By the way, brother Claude, I want a florin for holding my breath.”
“Silence! you shall have it.”
“Then give it to me.”
“Take it!” said the archdeacon, angrily, flinging him his purse.
Jehan crept farther under the stove, and the door opened.
CHAPTER V
The Two Men Dressed in Black
The person who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy air. Our friend Jehan (who, as may readily be supposed, had so disposed himself in his corner that he could see and hear everything at his good pleasure) was struck, at the first glance, by the extreme melancholy of the newcomer’s face and attire. Yet a certain amiability pervaded the countenance, albeit it was the amiability of a cat or a judge,—a sickly amiability. The man was very grey, wrinkled, bordering on sixty years; had white eyebrows, hanging lip, and big hands. When Jehan saw that he was a mere nobody,—that is, probably a doctor or a magistrate, and that his nose was very far away from his mouth, a sure sign of stupidity,—he curled himself up in his hiding-place, in despair at having to pass an indefinite length of time in so uncomfortable a position and in such poor company.
Meantime, the archdeacon did not even rise from his chair to greet this person. He signed to him to be seated on a stool near the door, and after a few moments’ silence, which seemed the continuation of a previous meditation, he said in a somewhat patronizing tone, “Good-morning, Master Jacques.”
“Your servant, master,” replied the man in black.
In the two ways of pronouncing,—on the one hand that “Master Jacques,” and